Mona Lisa
by The Cheshire Cheese
Summary: She smiles because she knows something that you don't. From the grim horrors of the street, to the dirty secrets of the simstim industry, to the "ghosts" in cyberspace, Mona has this knowledge. Now, what to do with it? (SPOILERS for "Mona Lisa Overdrive")


**A/N: Mona's fate at the end of "Mona Lisa Overdrive," replacing Angie Mitchell, is treated like a happy ending. But if one thinks about it, Mona's new predicament is questionable at best. And even Gibson himself said in an interview, "happy or sad endings are just a matter of when you chose to stop the story. If you think a woman's okay because she's married with kids…" …Or because she's now rich and famous…**

**Well, here's my take on where Mona's life may have gone.**

* * *

At seventeen, Mona Lisa was a new girl, both inside and out. Outside, she was now Angie Mitchell, the simstim star she'd once adored. Inside, she'd woken up, begun to explore and question everything. Part of this new alertness was thanks in part to the medical clinic that drained the drug addictions from her body. But Mona knew it was more than that. It was the experience, what she'd just been through. Being kidnapped by shady suits, and nearly becoming another forgotten dead hooker; the only thing that had saved her was her careful observation, figuring out what was going down before it was too late. Mona vowed never to be so gullible again. And then stardom, exploring her new life, not just the luxuries but the _system_, the shady ways in which the highest class operated. There was so much Mona had never known, and it had all been happening right under her nose, behind the smiles in the magazines she read and the acting performances in the episodes she stimmed.

So behind the scenes of playing Angie, Mona was doing as much learning as possible. First and foremost, she wanted to learn how to read. Prophyre, her new agent, hairdresser and guardian, insisted it was irrelevant. "Missy needn't worry about such trivial things as reading, she's got people to do that for her." No, Mona had demanded, I want to know how. Myself. I wanna read what the magazines are saying about me, about Angie. So Prophyre caved and got her a tutor.

"Angie Mitchell's" stims took a new turn, over the next few years. The episodes involved more traveling, almost mimicking geographic documentaries. Angie had taken a sudden interest in exploring. And what no one, maybe not even Prophyre, knew, was that Mona was also exploring her past. She was SINless, an unregistered birth, so recorded records weren't an option. She had only her memories to go off of, and research that might explain them. The old man, the catfish farm, Cleveland…

"What's this Missy?" Prophyre picked a book up off the windowsill, oldschool paper-print style, with the transparent cover jacket and everything. _Inherited Dependency, _by Dr. Andrea Velazquez.

Mona looked up from the window seat, where she sat reading one of her own magazines. "It's about kids whose mom's were doing drugs while they were pregnant." Mona had a sip of her expensive, iced latte. "All adds up. Why I was so slow as a kid. Why I wasn't being raised by my parents. I'm figuring the old man was my grandpa, I'm like ninety-nine-percent sure now. I went through the Cleveland records 'while ago, tracked down the catfish farm I grew up in, guy who owned it. Not much information, but one news article said he had a daughter got eleven years in prison for dealing hard drugs, and she was pregnant." Eyes back to her magazine. "He's gone now. Found his obituary." Shifted in her seat, another sip of latte. "I'd'a never gone off with that pimp Eddy if I'd had as much brain cells as a normal kid. Or I'd at least have taken longer to think about it."

Prophyre's long sigh. "Missy focuses too much on the past, on the negative." He set the book back on the window sill. "Mona,"

She looked up. For all their disagreements, this was one thing about Prophyre she always was so grateful for: he still called her Mona. Of course, he'd been close with the real Angie, and wasn't just going to replace his friend, in his own mind. To him Mona was an actress, and Angie the character. He was the Angie expert, giving her pointers on what Angie would do or say. In a way, Prophyre was her grandpa, educating his granddaughter about the lost mother she was supposed to take after.

"Mona I'm sorry. You're right to look into your past. We all need to know where we come from. But now that's done, we're not going to live in the past anymore, are we? We're going to think ahead, aren't we?"

"Who's living in the past," Mona muttered. "The whole world's fantasizing Angie's still alive, and we're helping them do it."

Except it wasn't the _whole_ world fantasizing, not anymore. Two years into being "Angie," people had begun to get suspicious. None more than Danielle Stark, one of Angie's oldest friends in showbiz. Stark was notorious for drugs and alcohol though, and people didn't take her seriously. Mona kind of pitied the blonde simstim veteran, when she'd exclaimed at parties or meetings that this wasn't Angie, are you all blind, it's _obviously_ some kind of impostor, _I know Angie and that ain't her!_ Now Danielle had mostly given up trying to convince anyone in the biz; but she still made her opinion known in interviews and her public journal. Whenever she and Mona were in the same room, she would watch her out of the corner of her eye, like a grazing herbivore keeping tabs on a stalking predator.

And consol jockeys, hackers, they added Angie Mitchell to their conspiracy theories. Among their tales of "ghosts" floating around cyberspace, and the matrix itself somehow having attained sentience, jockeys now swore up and down they'd seen Angie Mitchell in cyberspace, often accompanied by "the Count." Mona figured she knew who "the Count" was—the man on the stretcher, who she'd seen standing next to Angie up on the computer screen right after they'd both died. Mona first heard that rumor less than a month into her Angie career. A reporter had asked her, half jokingly, what she thought about the rumors about her appearing in cyberspace, seen in sections no human should have been able to access.

"Have you constructed an AI copy of yourself? Or have you simply found a way to hack into these off-limits databases?" the reporter asked, with a humorous smile.

And Angie, still brand new to showbiz, had only gapped. "Uh…maybe both?" Then awkwardly joined the reporter in a laugh.

By playing along, Mona had wrung from the reporter the last spot in the matrix where "Angie" had been reportedly seen. Then as soon as she was home, she immediately jacked into a computer and brought up the abandoned corporate core of Mitchell Enterprises, the business of Angie's late father. Mona figured she should get to know this place anyway, if she was going to play Angie. She spent six hours jacked in, killing time at random entertainment constructs, checking the Mitchell core at regular intervals. And finally she saw her. Angie, wandering the neon chessboard outside the construct, like walking along the yard outside an old mansion where she used to live. She wore one of her casual outfits from the stims, leather jacket and jeans, high boots, brown hair falling free behind her. For a split second their eyes met, and then Angie was gone, so fast Mona wasn't even sure she'd seen her.

And that was the last time she saw Angie for eight years. No one else saw her either. But the hackers still stood by their beliefs, that something funny was going on in the matrix, and Angie Mitchell was a part of it. Mona now had an interesting in hacker culture. Angie Mitchell's simstim series had had a story arc about it, where she visited the Sprawl, and in particular a bar called the Gentleman Loser, interviewing consol cowboys and listening to their wild theories.

* * *

Mona slid silently out of bed and tiptoed over to the elegant glass double-doors. Opened the door as slowly and quietly as she could, stepped onto the balcony. She was fully dressed, and had a bag slung over her shoulder full of extra clothes and toiletries. "Angie Mitchell" lived the life of royalty, and most of her important wardrobes and cleaning supplies were in other parts of the house; but Mona didn't need those, just the basics. And her bedroom had a massive walk-in closet, and a bathroom, from where she got the necessities she'd need.

She was twenty-one, as of yesterday, and fed up with being Angie. She felt a tad guilty, leaving all her expensive birthday gifts behind. But she couldn't risk being seen in any of those new dresses or pieces of jewelry, with their distinctive looks. She dressed in the most nondescript pieces of clothing she could find. Her hair was stuffed up into the most ordinary black Barrett she owned, and her eyes were hidden behind large plastic sunglasses. A couple days ago she had bought herself a new car, in secret, a tiny pale yellow bug that wouldn't stand out in today's streets. It was now in a parking garage in the city, just a half-hour walk from the mansion. The keys poked her thigh through her jean pocket.

The real bitch was be getting through that gate surrounding the house, manned by cameras and security guards. The mansion was surrounded by a massive wall, an elegant stone prison, equipped with guards and cameras. Mona had spent almost a month researching how to hack a security system, until she was able to rework her mansions' computer into leaving this night opened for her. A door in the wall, only meant for the use of guards, was now unlocked, and she'd messed with the guards' scheduling so that the man and woman who alternated between patrolling this area each thought the other was working tonight.

Once she'd quietly closed the door to the wall shut behind her, Mona broke into a run, tearing across the grass, not slowing to a walk until she reached the city. She then briskly walked a maze through the streets for probably almost an hour, hoping to throw off any tail, and then made for the parking garage, looking like an ordinary citizen. Tossed her bag in the front seat, shifted into gear and took off. Straight for Cleveland.

Halfway to Ohio, Mona gave herself a haircut, in the parked car, with her own scissors. It came out like crap, but oh well. She kept the sunglasses on, and a long baggy coat, hoping to hide any distinctive Angie features that could get her recognized. Once in Cleveland she tracked down the old catfish farm she'd grown up on, only to find it was gone. The trailer had been removed and that spot of the forest cleared, replaced by a '50s themed burger restaurant. The food was good though, Mona had to admit.

After that she just traveled the city, living out of various motels. Drove across the bridge, visited tourist spots, ate at random places. Got a hold of some wiz, just for old-time's sake, knowing full well what a bad idea it was. She wasn't gonna get addicted this time, she told herself. Just a little treat. She chatted with people at the various bars and coffee shops she visited, introducing herself for the first time in years as Mona. She got lucky with a few guys. But maybe her favorite pastime of all, now, was her walks in the rain.

Mona loved rain. She lay on the bed now, listening to the light drizzle from outside, the blinds opened to offer a view of the silver sky. She lay naked on the bed, damp from the spray. Her walks in the rain reminded her of her friend Lanette, from her teenage-hood in Cleveland, and their "silver walks" in the rain after doing some crystals and she couldn't remember what else. After all these years, she still didn't know what had happened to Lanette. She might be dead right now, or she might be in California, in a motel of her own, reminiscing about the same memory.

A gentle knock on the door.

She found a motel towel and tossed it around her. Mona's chest was tight when she answered, knowing who it would be. Prophyre stood in the light drizzling rain, under an elegant black umbrella. Mona relished the spray once more, and longed to throw the towel off and run into it like a sprinkler; but she was trying to keep a low profile now, and going streaking in the rain would obviously be counterproductive.

"Mona," Prophyre's voice was sincere, none of that patronizing "missy" nonsense. "What did we do? Was it something I did?"

"Nothing," Mona said. "You didn't do anything. I'm just sick of bein' Angie's all."

"Ah." His eyes traveled the messy motel room. "You just needed a break." His eyes landed on the bag of wiz sitting on the counter, by the TV.

"No Prophyre, it's not just a break, I'm _done_. Finished. I'm not gonna be Angie anymore. I'm almost twenty-two and I've never once been my own person! All I've done is whore out my body and keep myself locked up inside. I'm sick of it, I won't go back!"

"Mona, please. Just consider—"

"I'll tell!" Mona's voice was rising. "I'll go to the news and tell everyone the truth! That Angie Mitchell's dead and I'm not her! I'll have a DNA test done on myself to prove it!"

"Alright!" he said, shaking his umbrella and closing it. "Alright, just—keep it down. We'll find a way to sort this out."

"There's nothing to sort! I'm done Prophyre!"

Prophyre stepped into the room, sat his closed umbrella against the wall, then sat himself on the bed. "If that's true, then there's _plenty_ to sort out. Where will you work, once your funds run out? Where will you get the money to undo that cosmetic surgery, so you're not Angie anymore?" His dark eyes flicked to the wiz, and she knew what he was thinking.

"I won't go back to the street. I can get a job, a real job." Truth, Mona hadn't given work much thought. She'd thought a little about jobs, but now, she realized, not nearly enough. "There's gotta be places I can work. I can work with catfish."

"You've been keeping up your catfish farming skills, since you left that profession at age fourteen?"

She rocked on her heel. "I can flip burgers. Work a cash register."

"Hard to pay for a cosmetic surgery on that kind of money." Prophyre thought into his fist. "Alright, you know how to act in a stim. We can find you a job, doing the same thing you've been doing, but you'll be a new name. New look. Give you time to think, support yourself until you figure out what you really want to do."

It seemed the only option that made sense. "I want something low-key. Not big and famous."

"A soap opera, maybe." Seeing her face, eh decided, "Alright, maybe not _that_ low-key. But there are always some new series popping up. I'm sure we can find you something. We'll get you a new identity, and get ourselves a new Angie."

Mona sniffed, not realizing she'd been halfway to tears. "Thanks, Prophyre."

"All I want is for Missy to be happy."

* * *

So they finally reached an agreement: Mona was free, no more being Angie Mitchell, no more being supervised by Prophyre, just free to go. Start her own life, on her own. Prophyre would find a new girl to be Angie. Mona would keep her lips sealed, and in return, Prophyre would pay for a cosmetic makeover, so Mona wouldn't look like Angie Mitchell anymore. They could, if she wanted, return her natural face and breasts, so she'd look like she had before. But Mona didn't want to be that Mona again. She was ashamed of her teenaged life. She wanted something completely fresh.

"A skin-tint," Prophyre eyed the chart when she showed him, and winked. "Good choice!"

Prophyre, like Mona, had been born white. She wasn't quite going to go "black," like he had. Just a sort of light brown, enough to distinguish her from Angie. The skin color she picked out, along with the nose, lips and eye shape, would fit into a dozen different ethnicities, so people wouldn't be able to lock Mona into a box of "black," "white," "Hispanic," "Arab" or whatever. They'd just have to accept her. She picked a green for her eyes, to throw off the race even more, and had her breasts reduced to their natural size. Hair, she'd play around with. For now it was black and shoulder-length.

After the surgery, she and Porphyre had lunch at a café in Cleveland, and discussed job opportunities.

"I've got a list of jobs for you to audition for," he said, sipping his coffee. "But one question remains: what _name_ will you be acting under?"

"Mona," she said. "Mona Lisa."

"A nice stage name. But will that be your legal name as well? Or did you have a last name in mind?"

Prophyre knew as well as Mona that she'd never had a real last name. Or if she did, she didn't know it. She chewed her tuna-bagel sandwich slowly.

"How'd people pick their last names in the first place, when last names were first invented?"

Prophyre made a shrugging face. "Three main determiners were your father's name (Johnson, Wilson, Evans) your profession (Smith, Taylor, Miller), or what city you were from (Kensington, Hamilton…you get the idea.)"

Mona smiled, still chewing her bagel. Washing it down with her coffee, she said, "I know what my last name's gonna be."

* * *

Six months later, a low-budget, straight-to-tapes series introduced a new simstim actress named Mona Lisa Cleveland. The series was canceled after half a season, but it was all Mona needed to get her new career off to a start. The few people who followed "Mona Lisa" noted how similar her style was to Angie Mitchell's, just a few months before. Meanwhile, Angie's style had changed again. And again. The public began to catch on, that "Angie" was now more of a character than a real persona. As Angie and her agents denied it, it became a sort of game, like Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy.

Mona's life took a noticeable plunge, after this change in identity. No more sleeping between the finest satin sheets, no more mega-mansions or raging fan-base. She had to worry about bills now, and groceries. She rented a mediocre studio apartment, got around town in her little bug, and started making friends just like she used to, in bars and on street corners. It was okay, she decided, because even though she wasn't living the life of luxury anymore, she was still set.

"So both my fridge _and_ my bank account are empty, and I need a fucking job." Mona swigged her can of Pepsi. "_And_ I'm pregnant, and the dad's a schmuck, and I can't even get drunk!"

"You'll find work," Steve assured her.

Steve worked behind the counter of one of Mona's favorite bar-and-grills, a heavyset black guy in his fifties, eyes tinted an unreal pale green. He was one of Mona's best friends now. This restaurant, Henley's, was located in the middle of Chicago, which was essentially the poor-man's Hollywood for simstim actors. The big-name shows were recorded mostly in California, but Chicago was a hotbed for a lot of the second-rate, third-rate, and independently produced stims. Mona was twenty-four now, three years away from being Angie, and four months into her first pregnancy. Overall, she still considered this the best part of her life, but there was obviously still plenty to work on.

"Steve, it sucks. I'm getting most'a my meals from the pantry, I used the last of my chip to buy this Coke."

Drying a mug, Steve noted, "That's Pepsi, dear."

"Whatever."

"Go home, get some rest," Steve suggested. "Go back to job hunting in the morning."

She shook her head, long hair falling in front of her face. It was waist length now, tinted a purple-burgundy. "I won't be able to even _get_ to sleep, 'less I do some job hunting tonight. Otherwise I'll feel lazy."

She finished her Pepsi within minutes, but pretended to keep sipping it for another hour, conversing with Steve and some other friends, before going home to do that "job hunting."

She jacked in, greeted by the familiar neon chessboard of the matrix, and keyed the address for the job hunting database she'd been using. The periwinkle trapezoid that represented the database flew out at her from the blackness of cyberspace, engulfed her, and then her entire field of vision was overtaken by a wall of black text floating over a periwinkle backdrop. She didn't see what console cowboys and computer geeks found so fascinating about cyber-data. She skimmed half a page of potential jobs, then backed out, back into that neon gridiron, and keyed in a search for baby names. A dozen different candy-colored shapes surrounded her, with the names of the databases appearing briefly when she looked at each one long enough. She selected a baby-blue sphere off to her right, let the shape engulf her, and began scrolling through the lists. Too tired to have anything in mind, Angie just skimmed all the names in alphabetical order. She was in the middle of the Gs when the matrix suddenly changed.

Or vanished, to be more precise.

She was in Cleveland, in the rain. At night. Not just any night. This was the backdrop to her strongest memory of Lanette, their high walk in the rain, the Silver Walks. Mona wasn't high now, of course; even if she wasn't pregnant, she was long done with that shit. But the city, the rain, it looked as it did when viewed through intoxicated eyes. Details unnaturally sharp, neon lights dancing at impossible rates in the wet street, an oddly serene feel over the entire city. And then a voice, one she hadn't heard in years, like her own but years younger, ringing out as clearly as if the speaker was standing right next to her: _It's moving so fast it's standing still. _

What could bring back Mona's memory of the Silver Walks, and the voice she'd hallucinated during that high all those years ago, so sharply and perfectly?

A few feet ahead of her, facing her across the street in the rain, stood a woman about Mona's own age. For a brief fraction of a second she hoped it was Lanette, but no, it wasn't. It was a form and face Mona had grown to know, now, from so many different angles: first a mere idol in the stims; then the mask she'd seen in the mirror, for five years; and now, when she saw it back on the magazines and posters, a disturbing memory she usually didn't want to be reminded of. But the woman before her was no memory, no reflection, and no recorded image; Mona knew, somehow, that this _was_ Angie Mitchell, the real Angie Mitchell. Or what was left of her.

Mona remained where she stood, hands in her deep pockets, listening to the rain beating off her baggy leather jacket. "You're her."

"Mona." Angie's blue eyes moved up and down her, almost with confusion. "You look different."

Mona remembered her makeover, both of them. Angie hadn't changed a day. In her denim jacket and tall boots, straight brown hair, she looked like some kind of throwback to Angie's style of five years ago. Which, of course, had been the last anyone had seen of the real Angie.

"I got sick of being you." Mona finally explained. "No offense."

So it was true, the rumors, the conspiracy theories. Angie Mitchell had transformed, somehow, into a ghost of cyberspace. Mona still wasn't sure how she knew, so fully and certainly, that this was the real Angie, and not a hallucination or a special effect. But she did, through and through.

Angie's eyes moved again up and down Mona. "What happened?"

Mona wasn't sure what Angie was asking, so she decided to confess everything. Or a condensed version of it. The rain poured on, while Mona poured out her story. How she couldn't take filling Angie's shoes anymore. How she'd reinvented herself. Even how Prophyre had gone through two or three other Angies, and how the public was starting to catch on.

"What were you doing," Angie asked, "Before I showed up?"

"Looking up baby names." Hands still in pockets, Mona opened her jacket, revealing the curve of her wet T-shirted belly. She felt the corner of her mouth move up in a smile.

A silence passed, as Mona lost herself in the memory she and Angie were standing in. The sound of the rain was somehow dulled. For rain this hard, she and Angie should have had more trouble hearing each other. Mona didn't remember her and Lanette saying a single word to each other, when they'd walked in this rain, so she couldn't say how accurate this detail was. Maybe because none of this was real, she was hearing Angie and herself speak more in her head than "for real," like in a dream. Or maybe her hearing had been as affected as her eyesight, during this high. If she had Lanette had chosen to speak, would their voices have rung out this clearly, while the rain politely took down its volume?

"So," Angie finally said, as if preparing to bring their meeting to a close, "Now we each know the other is out there. And neither of us is Angie Mitchell anymore."

Again, Mona didn't know how she knew, but Angie was going to leave her again, very soon. A dozen questions flew through her mind: how did you end up a cyber-ghost? What happened when you died? Why did you want us to each "know the other was out there?" Where've you been the last eight years?

But somehow, all that came out of Mona's mouth…

"When we leave, will it this place still be here? This city, this rain?"

"I'm not sure." Angie's blue eyes narrowed in thought. "I guess it's one of those 'if a tree falls' things."

_Ask her. Ask her now_. But Mona suddenly couldn't remember the next thing she'd wanted to ask Angie, nor why it had seemed so important a moment ago.

"Well," Angie finally decided to wrap this awkward meeting up, "Have a good life, being Mona."

Mona smiled again. "Have a good life, being…"

"Angie." The sim star smiled—not the famous toothy flash from the posters, just a small, serene smile. "Just Angie."

And then the rain was gone, just like that. Angie was in her computer chair, in her rundown apartment, staring at her computer deck. She should be used to it, Mona figured, people and places just popping into her life, and then vanishing just as quickly. With a sickening thought, she remembered the baby boy growing inside her, and wondered, will he disappear someday too?

No, no. That part of her life was done. She maintained contact with Prophyre, and most of the good friends she'd begun to make in her new life as Mona Cleveland. This wasn't going to be like before. She was going to keep in touch with people, keep a hold of her life.

* * *

"It was _not_ a dream Steve, I'd never a billion years get high or drunk while pregnant, and even if I wasn't pregnant I'm done with that shit, and if I was gonna go crazy I'd'a done it a _long_ time go."

The bartender shrugged defensively. "Okay, okay. But we still didn't rule out someone pranking you."

"Where would they get that memory?" Mona argued, gripping the edge of the wood counter, staring at Steve like he was an idiot. "The rain, Cleveland? I ain't told more n' a few people about that, and I can't imagine any of them'd want to prank me with it. Even if they _could_ somehow recreate it that perfectly, just based on my description, which is impossible."

Steve sighed. "I mean, I believe you Angie, I just don't know…"

"Believe it." A wizened old man in a beat up leather jacket clapped his Long Island onto the counter, gave a small burp. "Angie's in there, and so's Lady 3Jane, and the Loa, and a dozen other ghosts." Before Steve could make some wisecrack, the aged jockey pointed at Mona. "You wanna make some money, kid, I'll bet'cha a dozen and a half cowboys out there tryin' to figure out the Shape of the matrix'll pay good money for an interview about your conversation with Angie."

A woman sitting on the other side of the man wrinkled her nose at him. "Selling information in the criminal underground? Kinda' dangerous work, ya think?"

Mona said sternly, "I don't deal with outlaws." She privately added, _anymore_.

The old jockey closed his eyes a moment, and blew doubtfully through his lips. "I'm telling' you girlie, you don't even have to get to the Sprawl to find folks interested in that type of thing. Right here in old Chicago, there's at least a sizable population of consol cowboys and eggheads and conspiracy theorists 'love to hear any updates on the Angie in Cyberspace theory. Shit, I'll buy you a drink for a few more details."

"Well I'm not exactly in the mood for anything alcoholic," Mona patted her baby-bump. "But I'll tell you for an orange soda, how's that."

"Deal. Sam," he made eye contact with the bartender, gesturing to Mona with his cup.

"My name's Steve."

"_Pfft_…"

It got Mona thinking, on her way home from the bar that night. _Information_. If there was one thing she had an abundance of, it was memories, and what were memories but a type of information? She had information, and she had experience as a simstim actress.

* * *

It wasn't the headline, but it was one of the small boxes on the cover of the local magazine: _Ghosts in the Matrix? Mona Lisa Cleveland's independent simstim, 'Ghosts in the Matrix' debuted this June, and still ranks #2 at the local Chicago box office, second only to Todd Youngling's... _The article laid out the inspiring story of an unsuccessful stim actress and poor single mother, waiting tables by day and working on her independent documentary by night, finally releasing her surprisingly successful breakout stim where she interviewed hackers about the ghosts they'd seen in cyberspace. The article also went into a bit of Mona's personal life: her difficult childhood in poverty (politely excluding her profession and addictions); her now one-year-old son, Robin; and her new engagement to fellow reporter Carlos Eisenberg.

The documentary she was working on now was about prostitution. This one, she might reveal a bit more personal information. Ashamed as she was of that part of her past, she knew that both the experience and the shame would give her a creditability in the public's eye. After that, she'd go for something a bit more light-hearted, probably the secrets of the fashion industry.

The conspiracy Mona Lisa wouldn't touch was Angie. After "Ghosts in Cyberspace," she never addressed the issue of whether or not Angie was changing actresses or not. And even in "Ghosts in Cyberspace," Mona had keep a professional distance, not voicing any opinion on where she thought Angie was now, or whether she herself had ever encountered the star in cyberspace.

_Missy focuses too much on the past, on the negative. _

"I sure do Porph," she told her friend, the most recent time they'd had lunch together a few weeks ago, catching up and reminiscing about old times. That half smile, on the corner of her lips. "The past and the negative are Mona Lisa Cleveland's specialties."

* * *

**A/N: The scene where Mona talks to Angie in the rain is a rehash of a scene from my Angie-centered story, "Daughter of the Loa." Read that one, if you want more of their conversation, or if you just want to know what I think Angie was up to. :) **


End file.
